Stone’s Vindication of Hitler is a Crime Against History

Hollywood director Oliver Stone – who previously tried to rewrite history with his ultra-left conspiracy work of fiction “JFK” is at it again. But this time he’s not accusing the American government of murdering its own president.

Instead, he’s simply trying to stop the “Jewish domination of the media,” so that the film industry can put Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “in context,” as an “easy scapegoat,” and “a product of a series of actions,” in his upcoming 10-hour Showtime docudrama, “The Secret History of America.”

This past weekend Stone told the Sunday Times in England: “We can’t judge people as only bad or good . . . Hitler was a Frankenstein, but there was also a Dr. Frankenstein. German industrialists, the Americans and the British. He had a lot of support.”

Under the false pretense of putting Hitler “in context,” what Stone is really saying is that even the good guys like America and Great Britain helped him, which means he couldn’t have been all that bad.

That’s pretty hard to believe since it was the United States and Great Britain that heroically charged the shores of Normandy in 1944 and crushed the Third Reich into pieces, striking so much fear into Hitler’s heart that he abandoned his country, and in one of history’s greatest acts of cowardice, killed himself.

Stone is correct that Hitler did have a lot of support, but it was mainly from the German people during the reign of the Third Reich from 1933-1945.

Despite the pathetic excuses made by historical revisionists, millions of Germans supported their Nazi leaders and the sadistic crimes they committed upon innocent Jews and other poor souls who found themselves and their children working as slaves in concentration camps before they were tortured and killed.

Stone seems to think he can produce his docudrama under the auspices of shedding new light, but he can’t because it’s no secret that the Nazis used Jewish slave labor to work in factories owned by German companies that had American counterparts like Ford Motor Company.

Stone’s misperception of politics and history should come as no surprise, however. On June 28, Stone told ABC “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos that he “absolutely” believes Hugo Chavez is a good person, and after he met with Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad he said, “Iran isn’t necessarily the bad guy.” Instead, he condemned U.S. policy toward Iran as “horrible.”

In essence, the effect of Stone’s work will be an attempt at vindicating Adolf Hitler, the single worst person in the history of the world. This is because despite the tragedies caused by Mao, Stalin and other dictators, there was never a historical account of any leader or their pathetically weak followers taking sadistic pleasure in the pain, humiliation and torture they inflicted upon their victims. The Nazis didn’t just kill people. They enjoyed it and thrived off the sadness and powerlessness they caused their victims.

By even attempting to rationalize Hitler’s acts as merely economical or strategic, Stone runs the risk of legitimizing genocide, slave labor and torture. One can’t help but wonder what the emotional driving force is for Stone to do such a thing. Is it really a noble attempt to explain history or just a streak of anti-Semitic vindictiveness designed to disempower Jews in America?

Perhaps this quote from his Times interview sheds some light:

“The Jewish domination of the media,” Stone professed, “there’s a major lobby in the United States. They are hard workers. They stay on top of every comment, the most powerful lobby in Washington. Israel has f***ed up United States foreign policy for years.”

Apparently, Oliver Stone has forgotten that it was Israel that remained America’s only loyal ally in the Middle East throughout the harsh decades of the cold war with the Soviet Union. He also forgets that many of the Jews that are in Washington today are elected officials to Congress that the American people democratically elected. Unlike Adolf Hitler, our Jewish congressional representatives never coerced anyone to vote for them.

Nazism is alive even today in both America and Germany. In fact, the Simon Wiesenthal Center still makes efforts to hunt down Nazi war criminals, but has a difficult time getting cooperation from the countries in which they are hiding. The operation’s chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff, wrote in his recent book, “Operation Last Chance,” that there has been a growing ambivalence about Holocaust crimes, a morally flawed position that those cowardly, sick acts happened a long time ago and should be forgotten, and that prosecution at this time serves no purpose.

Those countries are wrong. Prosecution of war criminals or of any criminal always serves a purpose – justice.

Oliver Stone’s new series will only further encourage the growing ambivalence many people already have about Holocaust crimes and empower Fourth Reich Nazis who are trying to reignite the anti-Semitism that once flourished throughout Europe.

Anytime anyone makes excuses for the Nazis, they are empowering evil. Oliver Stone’s self-declared attempt at putting Hitler “in context” is a veiled anti-Semitic strike against Holocaust survivors and Jews just as his praise for America’s enemies like Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are veiled strikes against the United States.

Oliver Stone is dead wrong. We can judge people as either all bad or good, and Adolf Hitler was bad – as is Oliver Stone and anyone else who distorts the truth to vindicate evil.

Jeffrey Scott Shapiro is an investigative reporter and former Washington, D.C. prosecutor who can be reached at jshapiro@ufl.edu. Information about the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s “Operation Last Chance” can be viewed at http://www.operationlastchance.org/.